Did Yeshua Break the Torah?
Introduction
The question of whether Yeshua violated the Sabbath and other Torah commandments has long been a point of debate. In many passages, Jesus is seen healing on the Sabbath or engaging in actions that appear to contradict the religious norms of the time. However, a deeper exploration of the Gospels reveals that Yeshua's actions were not about disregarding the Torah but fulfilling it with a focus on the heart of its commandments. This lesson delves into the cultural and religious context of Yeshua's interactions with the Pharisees and teachers of the law, particularly regarding the Sabbath and purity laws, and how His actions align with Jewish understanding.
Yeshua and the Sabbath
Yeshua claimed to fulfill the Torah, not to abolish it. But what about the passages where He seems to break the Torah or argues with religious leaders?
The Gospels tell several stories about Yeshua entering conflicts with religious authorities regarding the observance of the Sabbath day. We can read about the Sabbath day in Exodus 20:9:
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. (Exodus 20:9, ESV Bible)
In fact, anyone who does any work on the Sabbath is liable to the death penalty. But we read in the Gospels that Yeshua’s disciples picked grain on the Sabbath, and He defended them. He routinely healed people on the Sabbath day, despite the objections of the Pharisees and the teaches of the Torah. Was Yeshua a Sabbath-breaker?
The answer is “yes.” Yeshua believed not only that it is permissible to break the Sabbath but also that the Torah actually requires a Jewish person to break the Sabbath under certain conditions.
Two reasons a Jewish person might justifiably set aside the Sabbath prohibitions are to 1) Saving a human life and 2) Alleviating human suffering.
Jewish law says that so long as there is even a chance that a doctor might save someone’s life on the Sabbath, the doctor is permitted to set aside the Sabbath prohibitions. That’s essentially what Yeshua was teaching and doing. As a healer, He was like a physician among the people.
The Gospels depict Yeshua and His disciples observing the Sabbath just like other Galilean Jews. It is very obvious that Yeshua kept the Sabbath and expected His Jewish disciples to do so as well. He told them to pray that they would not need to flee from persecution on a Sabbath day:
Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. (Matthew 24:20, ESV Bible)
When his disciples wanted to perform burial rites to prepare His body, they were unable to do so because the Sabbath was beginning:
Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. (Luke 23:56, ESV Bible)
If Yeshua had been teaching them not to observe the Sabbath, they would not have waited until after the Sabbath to anoint His body.
Another story that relates to the Sabbath is in Matthew 12:1:
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. (Matthew 12:1, ESV Bible)
Luke tells of that the disciples rubbed the heads of the grain in their hands to husk them before eating them:
On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. (Luke 6:1, ESV Bible)
For a more detailed exploration of this passage from Luke 6, click here. The Torah seems to allow for snacking from someones produce as you pass through a field:
If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain. (Deuteronomy 23:25)
There were some disciples of the Pharisees traveling with the Master. As they passed through the fields on the Sabbath, they saw the disciples of Jesus plucking and husking and said:
But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:2, ESV Bible)
While we learn that Jesus did not pluck or eat the grain, the Pharisees still lodged their complaint against him. As the rabbi over his school of disciples, he had responsibility for their behavior. By allowing the disciples to perpetrate the alleged Sabbath violation, he endorsed their behavior.
The behavior of the disciples astonished the Pharisees because it violated Jewish interpretation of the Sabbath prohibition on work. Jewish law defines the biblical prohibition on work (melachah) as a prohibition on 39 categories of creative and productive acts. The list of prohibited activities includes reaping, threshing, and winnowing. The Pharisees objected that, as the disciples plucked the grain and husked it in their hands, they violated all three.
Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. (Exodus 31:15, ESV Bible)
The word first appears in Genesis:
And on the seventh day God finished his work [melachah] that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. (Genesis 2:2, ESV Bible)
This context defines melachah as creative acts of production, including the creation of light, the creation of substance, formation, separation, planting, and creative activities of making, mixing, shaping, and altering—even when those works are performed miraculously. The Torah offers additional definitions by specifying forbidden forms of melachah, such as lighting a fire, gathering, plowing, harvesting, and carrying, but it never provides what could be considered an exhaustive list of prohibited activities.
The rabbis pointed to Exodus 31 and 35, in which the Torah indicates that the activities required to build the Tabernacle constitute melachah and prohibits Israel from performing those acts of melachah on Shabbat even for the sake of building the Tabernacle. The sages logically derived the aforementioned 39 categories of work based on the types of labor required for building the Tabernacle. They reasoned that since the forms of creation and craftsmanship required for the construction of the Tabernacle constituted melachah prohibited on the Sabbath, they could use those types of labor and activity to arrive at a precise definition of the word. They needed a precise definition of the word because the Torah prescribed a death penalty for the Israelite who performed melachah on the Sabbath.
The list of prohibited activities includes reaping, threshing, and winnowing. The Pharisees objected that, as Jesus’ disciples plucked the grain and husked it in their hands, they violated all three. Although the written sources documenting the rabbinic definitions on Sabbath observance were not recorded until the second and third centuries (m. Shabbat 7:2), the Pharisees’ stunned reaction indicates that those definitions, at lest in nascent form, already enjoyed widespread acceptance in the days of Jesus.
For many Christian interpreters, Jesus allowed his disciples to violate the Sabbath because he had the authority to override the Sabbath. They would say He came to cancel the ritual and ceremonial aspects of the Torah. In the economy of grace, the Law is set aside.
Did Jesus really cancel the Torah, thereby cancelling the Sabbath? For him to do so would constitute sin and disqualify his messianic claims. The apostolic community could not have reckoned him as sinless if he violated the Sabbath or endorsed its violation. Others would say, the disciples were not breaking the written Torah prohibitions but only the rabbinic fences and man-made traditions around Sabbath keeping. But in reality, the Torah does forbid harvesting on the Sabbath:
“Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. (Exodus 34:21, ESV Bible)
Jesus did not challenge or criticize the Pharisees’ interpretation of Sabbath violations. Jesus admitted they were breaking the Sabbath. However, he defended their right to do so by citing two legal precedents from Scripture: the incident of David with the bread of the Presence and the Sabbath-day work of the priesthood in the Temple. We read:
He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? (Matthew 12:3-4, ESV Bible)
Jesus was referring to 1 Samuel 21:1-6:
Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?”So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away. (1 Samuel 21:1-6, ESV Bible)
This was the holy bread placed on the table inside the Tabernacle and changed out with fresh loaves every Sabbath. The Torah says that only the priesthood may eat the bread of the Presence and only within the Sanctuary:
“You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the LORD. And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the LORD. Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the LORD regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the LORD’s food offerings, a perpetual due.” (Leviticus 24:5-9, ESV Bible)
Nevertheless, Ahimelech gave David the bread. David took the bread, ate it, and left with the rest of it. The story of David and the holy Sabbath bread may have been a common illustration used by the rabbis to discuss Sabbath observance and halachah. The midrasnhic collection Yalkut Shimoni uses the story to prove that the preservation of life takes precedence over the Sabbath:
It was Shabbat, and David saw that they were baking the Bread of the Presence on Shabbat…Since he had not found anything there except the Bread of the Presence, David said to him, “Give it to me so that we do not die of hunger, since when there is a case of doubt regarding life, it supersedes Shabbat.” How much did David eat on that particular Shabbat? Rabbi Chuna said, “David ate almost seven se’ahs due to his hunger, since ravenous hunger had gripped him.” (Yalkut Shimoni 2:130 on 1 Samuel 21:5)
Note that the midrash placed the episode on the Sabbath day. The narrative of 1 Samuel 21 also indicates that this story about David may have happened on the Sabbath day.
Jesus admitted that David and his companions did something “which is not lawful” when they took and ate the holy bread. In saying this, he conceded, by way of comparison, that his disciples also did something “which is not lawful” on the Sabbath. Both parties were hungry and without food. Both parties acquired food by forbidden means.
Jesus justified David on the basis that “he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him” (Mark 2:25). Jesus reasoned that the “need" and “hunger” of David and his men provided them with adequate reason for violating the ritual sanctity of the Temple service by eating the bread of Presence.
Jesus took the argument a little farther:
Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? (Matthew 12:5, ESV Bible)
Jesus points out that the priests violate the Sabbath prohibitions while working in the Temple on the Sabbath. But the Torah does command the priests to do so on the Sabbath (Leviticus 24:5-9).
Jewish law also points out similar contradictions between the Torah’s positive and negative commandments. To reconcile such moral dilemmas, the Talmudic-era sages derived the following axiom:
Whenever you find a positive commandment and a negative commandment contradicting, if you can fulfill both of them, it is preferable; but if not, let the positive command come and supersede the negative command. (B. Shabbat 133a)
The priests violated the Sabbath when serving in the Temple, but they were “innocent” because the Torah commanded them to do so. The positive commandment to conduct the Temple service superseded the negative commandment of the Sabbath prohibitions.
A person may be inclined to ask how does the incident with Jesus and the disciples, David and his men, and the priests on Shabbat, how are they connected? Jesus ties them all together when he says:
I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:6-8, ESV Bible)
Based on the two case precedents he cited, Jesus declared the need and hunger of his disciples to be a greater priority than the Sabbath. His argument follows: 1) if the hunger and need of human beings take precedence over the sanctity of the Temple service (which he demonstrated by David taking the forbidden, holy bread when he was hungry and in need), and 2) if the Temple service takes precedence over the sanctity of the Sabbath prohibitions (which he demonstrated by the priesthood violating the Sabbath to carry out the Temple services), then 3) human need must take precedence over the Sabbath. The logic is simple: The Temple service trumps the Sabbath, and human need trumps the Temple service. “Something greater than the temple is here,” namely human need.
If [human need] > [Temple Service] and [Temple Service] > [Sabbath] then [human need] > [Sabbath].
The Talmud employs the same argumentation to defend saving a life on Shabbat:
“If the service in the Temple supersedes the Sabbath, how much more should the saving of human life supersede the Sabbath laws!” (B. Yoma 85b)
Christians often interpret the words of Jesus to imply that he himself is “something greater than the temple.” The reasoning would result in the idea that Jesus is greater than the Sabbath and the Temple so he may violate the Sabbath because of who he is. If Jesus was arguing that his messianic or divine status granted him the authority to set aside the Sabbath at will, then we have returned full circle to the standard Christian interpretation that teaches that Jesus did not keep the Sabbath or require his followers to do so. When he said, “Something greater than the temple is here,” he could not have been referring to himself. Besides, would the Pharisees have accepted that defense? Instead, there thing “greater than the temple” must be the need and hunger of the disciples.
A strong parallel to Jesus argument occurs in the midrasnhic collection of Yalkut Shimoni, where David demands his right to the bread of the Presence on the basis that he and his men are in danger of starving and the preservation of life takes precedence over the Sabbath’s prohibitions:
David said to him, “Give it to me so that we do not die of hunger, since when there is a case of doubt regarding life, it supersedes Shabbat.” (Yalkut Shimoni 2:130 on 1 Samuel 21:5)
That the preservation of life (pikuach nefesh) takes precedence over the Sabbath is a true and well-attested law in rabbinic literature. Rabbinic halachah (legal procedure) sets aside most of the commandments, even the Sabbath prohibitions, for the sake of saving a human life. The Torah says, “You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them” (Leviticus 18:5). The sages interpreted this to mean that a commandment may be set aside to save a life. Life takes precedence over the commandments because it says, “you shall live by them,” not “die by them.” Therefore, the sages derived that it is permissible to violate the Sabbath to save a life:
A man may profane once Sabbath, so that he may live to keep many Sabbaths. Ran Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel, “If I had been there, I would have proved it [is permissible to break the Sabbath to save a life] with a better passage yet: “He shall live by them.” (b. Yoma 85b)
Yeshua and the Purity Laws
Did Yeshua break the Torah’s purity laws? After all, He touched an unclean leper (Mark 1:41), defended His disciples for eating bread with unwashed hands (Mark 7:2), and even declared “all foods clean” (Mark 7:19).
Ritual impurity is not a sin and they are not equal. It was a sin to enter the Temple or eat the holy Levitical foods while unclean, but becoming unclean was a normal part of human life. Ritual impurity is a perplexing concept to those raised without a Tabernacle or a Temple. These were holy places where God’s presence dwelt. A person had to be ritually pure to enter that space. These laws taught God’s people that approaching His presence was a serious matter. However, being ritually impure was a normal part of life.
In the story in Mark chapter 1, Yeshua heals the leper, and then He tells him:
“See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” (Mark 1:44, ESV Bible)
That doesn’t sound like a guy who has canceled the Torah’s purity laws. In fact, Leviticus 14 describes the process of presenting yourself to a priest. Sacrifice was a common part of the process.
Neither is eating with unwashed hands a sin except in the case of holy Levitical foods. That’s when the Torah requires hand washing. In the story in Mark chapter 7, the disciples were eating ordinary bread, not holy foods. Yeshua says that eating bread with unwashed hands doesn’t make a person ritually unclean. The food passes through. Eating defiled food does not make a person’s heart unholy. Sinful thoughts and intentions, however, do create an unclean heart.
Yeshua and the Food Laws
And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:14-23, ESV Bible)
In this passage from Mark, Jesus was not speaking about Levitical purity at all except to use the purity rubrics to illustrate His point regarding the purity of a person’s heart. Eating defiled food does not make a person’s heart unholy. In some modern Bible translations, it seems like Jesus is saying that all the food laws from the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) are canceled, meaning you can eat anything. However, this is not what the original Greek text of Mark 7:19 actually says. As for the famous verse in which Yeshua “declared all foods clean,” that’s not actually what it says in the Greek text behind Mark 7. Several modern translations render the last clause of Mark 7:19, “purging all foods,” as a narrator’s parenthetical statement supplied by the gospel writer. The phrase in Greek literally means “cleansing all foods,” and it’s not clear who or what is doing the cleansing. The translators of these modern versions tried to make sense of this, and they interpreted it as “Jesus declared all foods clean,” even though that’s not a direct translation from the Greek. In other words, they understand it to be a summary conclusion added by Mark to explain the entire teaching. According to that interpretation, Mark sums up the episode with the words, “Thus he declared all foods clean.” Consider the following translations, all of which are constructed around three words: “cleansing all foods.”
In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.” (NIV)
Thus He declared all foods clean. (NASB)
Thus he declared all foods clean. (ESV)
Thus he declared all foods clean. (RSV)
By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes. (NLT)
Thus He was making and declaring all foods [ceremonially] clean [that is, abolishing the ceremonial distinctions of the Levitical Law]. (AMP)
That is an unfortunate rendering by an English translator. The above translations all demonstrate remarkable creativity on the part of the translators as they attempt to translate a grammatical problem in Mark 7:19. A single dangling participle creates the confusion. In the Greek of Mark 7:19, the participle translated as “purifying” dangles with no obvious subject. The Greek text literally translates as “cleansing all foods.” The translators supply the rest of the parenthetical statement. In the above list, words added by the translator are italicized. The King James Version is more literal rendering and more accurate:
[Food] entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats. (Mark 7:19, King James Version)
It doesn’t say anything about Jesus changing or canceling the dietary laws from the Torah. So, in context, this passage is not about whether certain foods are “clean” or “unclean” according to Jewish law, but rather about how external rituals, like washing hands, don’t affect the purity of a person’s heart. The King James rendering makes better sense in the context.
In other words, he is talking about going to the bathroom, not about overturning the Torah’s dietary laws. Whatever a man eats passes through his digestive system and out into the toilet. Nevertheless, many translators argue that the Greek construction is better understood as a parenthetical comment summarizing the Master’s teaching on the subject. Even if we pretend that Jesus is in fact talking about the dietary laws, and he declares that they are canceled, making all foods clean as many translate it to mean, one must still place the saying within the context of the story. The story is about eating bread with unwashed hands. The Torah’s dietary laws were never part of the discussion.
Aaron Eby suggest an entirely different reading of the Greek of Mark 7:19. Eby points out that the Greek word for “purging” or “cleansing” could actually be talking about the digestive process itself, meaning how food moves through the stomach and then leaves the body.. According to his reading, Yeshua said:
“Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot compromise his holiness, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled into the toilet, making all of the food ritually pure?”
The key point Eby makes is that the Greek text uses the phrase “all of the food,” which refers to the specific food that goes through the digestive process. So, Jesus isn’t talking about all types of food (like pork or shellfish), but rather the food someone eats in general. According to this reading of the passage, the digestive process itself not only purges the food from the body, but it actually purifies it by transforming it into excrement.
Legally speaking, excrement cannot be ritually unclean or transmit ritual impurity. This may seem counterintuitive, but according to Jewish law, dung cannot contract ritual impurity. It may be filthy and smell awful, but it is not ceremonially unclean. According to the Talmud, when an animal or a person eats something ritually unclean, that object ceases to be ritually unclean when it becomes excrement. So long as the unclean thing loses its original shape and integrity in the digestive process, it can no longer transmit or contract ritual impurity.
Yeshua used the purity laws to illustrate His point regarding the purity of one’s heart. He declared that the things that proceed from the heart and out through the mouth compromise a person’s holiness. He speaks of this also in Matthew 12:
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. (Matthew 12:34-35, ESV Bible)
One commentator states Matthew 15 this way, “Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for being concerned with problems of food purity, important as they might be, and less concerned (in his view) with moral purity which is the “weightier matter of law.”
The sages made a similar application when teaching the purity laws of leprosy. The rabbis associated evil speech with the ritually defiling disease of leprosy. They derived the connection from the story of Miriam’s leprosy. The LORD punished Miriam with leprosy for grumbling against her brother Moses. The sages inferred from this that biblical leprosy came upon a person as a punishment for the sin of evil speech. Given that piece of information, the Torah’s laws about the leper became fertile ground for homiletic teachings about the sin of evil speech. The tongue is described as the evil spring. One who gossips and slanders is a spiritual leper.
A Chasidic story parallels the confrontation about hand-washing in Matthew 15 and Mark 7:
Several traveling Chasidim arrived at a small inn run by a Jewish innkeeper. Their host informed them that he had no dairy food to serve them, but he could offer them a meat meal. The Chasidim began to question him about the most scrupulous details relating to kosher meat. They demanded to know who had slaughtered the animal, whether the lungs had been inspected, how the meat was salted, rinsed, and drained, and so forth. A man who appeared to be an itinerant beggar sitting by the fireplace suddenly spoke up. "My dear Chasidim," he said, "Concerning what you put into your mouths, you conduct the most meticulous cross-examination, but on what you bring out of your mouths--your words--you make no halachic queries at all!” (S.Y. Zevin, A Treasury of Chassidic Tales on the Torah: Volume 1 (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 2003), 95-96.)
In Mark 7, Yeshua says that eating bread with unwashed hands doesn’t make a person ritually unclean. The food passes through. Eating defiled food does not make a person’s heart unholy. Sinful thoughts and intentions, however, do create an unclean heart.
Jesus was not the first to repurpose the language of ritual purity and consecration to speak about the spiritual defilement incurred by sin. The Scriptures often metaphorically employ the jargon of ritual purity to describe a moral state. For example, David says:
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. (Psalm 24:4, ESV Bible)
After Davids own sin, he says:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:1-7, ESV Bible)
The Prophets also invoked the language of ritual uncleanness and contamination to describe Israel’s idolatry, apostasy, and other sins. Our Master Yeshua taught an internalization of the Torah’s purity laws when He praised the “pure in heart.” In those cases, ritual uncleanness symbolizes sin and guilt. Ritual purity symbolizes innocence and righteousness. Ritual purification symbolizes God’s forgiveness of sins and removal of guilt.
Here is the parallel to Mark 7 in Matthew 15:
And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” (Matthew 15:10-20, ESV Bible)
His final words in Matthew 15:20, bring the entire discussion back to the original point of the teaching: “These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” The teaching has nothing to do with the dietary laws. The meats of unclean animals and sources of Levitical defilement described by the Torah were outside the scope of His discussion. The teaching pertained to ethical issues—not legal disputes.
The Christian interpretation that this conversation pertained to dietary laws has led many to assume the dietary laws are canceled. Rabbi Lichtenstein understood that the common Christian interpretation of the Master’s words disqualified Yeshua as a candidate for Messiah. Lichtenstein wrote: “He does not contradict the words of Torah here…as Gentile commentators interpret erroneously.” Lichtenstein went on to contrast the physical human body against the spiritual soul. He explained that Levitical contamination applies only to the physical body but does not defile the “true man,” the spiritual essence of the divine soul. Thus, nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him “unclean,” where “unclean” means having a spiritually defiled heart. The following definition help to clarify Matthew 15 and Mark 7 further:
Things that enter the man = foods and sources of ritual contamination
Cannot defile him = cannot make him unholy, they do not spiritually defile his divine soul; they pass our of the body.
Things which proceed out of a man = evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, slanders, etc.
Defile a man = make him unholy; they spiritually defile his divine soul
Meaning = Unclean food cannot defile a person’s heart because it passes through the digestive system, but sin does defile a person’s heart.
Since the spiritual soul is being compared and contrasted to the physical body, it relates to the idea of this age and the age to come. Our physical bodies will perish in this current world. Our souls will live into the world to come. The Levitical system is an earthly representation of heavenly things. It is more important that the spiritual essence of the divine soul, the true man, not be defiled.
Conclusion
Yeshua’s teachings and actions were deeply rooted in the Torah and Jewish tradition, even when they seemed to challenge the norms of His time. His focus was not on overturning the law but on restoring its true intent, particularly in areas like the Sabbath and ritual purity. Through His ministry, Yeshua emphasized compassion, mercy, and the importance of the heart’s condition over strict ritual observance. As we understand His teachings in their proper context, we see that Yeshua upheld the Torah in ways that revealed its deeper meaning, calling His followers to live out its commandments with true righteousness.